Wild Flowers of Alaska

I just sat down to choose the flowers that I want to put on the post and there are so many that I think I'll do it in two posts. I am quite a garden-plant lover so naturally the beautiful flowers in Alaska attracted my attention. I think the cool damp weather and the long hours of light encourage beautiful flowers. It was not fully dark till about 11pm. and it was light by 4am. We are well past the solstice so for quite a few months the plants have had many hours of light! I am not sure of all the names but will do my best.

The beautiful Alaska fireweed. There were fields of this lovely plant.

This was a very delicate plant, not sure the name.

This very tall large plant looked a bit like queen ann's lace.

I believe this is wild yarrow.

This was a large bush like plant. We only saw this near Exit Glacier.

Wild columbine

More beautiful fireweed.

This looked like wild sweet pea.

This is not wild but I wanted to show how tall the blue delphinium grew, up to the roof of a very nice cafe.

Thanks again to all of you that are still on the trip. Doing this part of the blog brings back happy memories for me.

Anchorage, AK

I am finally getting ready to finish my blog about our wonderful trip to Alaska. One reason it has taken me some time as we had hardwood floors put in our family room while we were gone. This also involved sanding the kitchen and refinishing that room too. We came home to all the furniture in the dining room and some dust although, the fellow who did the floors was as careful as possible with the dust. I also had 10 days of dead-heading to do in my garden! Enough excuses! As you can imagine, Anchorage was not as beautiful as other places we visited. It was a very touristy town. I did find some things worth a few photos.

I find ravens and crows very interesting so I couldn't resist this sign.

Here we have a bear dressed in Alaska themed fabric.

Another raven -bear advertisement of sorts. The following pictures have no political overtones as far as I'm concerned. I just thought they were funny no matter your politics!

We only saw Sarah Palin stuff in Anchorage, no where else in Alaska.

These beautiful flowers were everywhere. I don't think I've ever seen so many pretty flowers in a city!

This was a nice tribute to the Iditarod dogs.

The Alaska railroad is an important form of transportation in Alaska. People we met in Seward had traveled there from Anchorage.

There is a great bike-walking path along the water in Anchorage. We saw these interesting birds. Someone told us they were a type of Crane. We need to check our bird book!

I'll try to get the wild flower walk on tomorrow. Thanks again to our loyal followers on this trip!

Back Home but not done!

Hi To all you wonderful people who have followed this trip. We are home but I have two more posts. We were not able to blog in the hotel in Anchorage last night. It took 5-8 minutes to load one picture! The SBA refused to take all that time. I want to post photos from Anchorage-some funny pictures. I also want to post the wild flowers of Homer. They were just beautiful and too many to add to the other blogs. So , hopefully we will get things going tomorrow. Thanks again for going on this amazing trip with us!

Day 7

This is our last full day in Homer. We are beginning to get pretty tired so decided to have a somewhat low key day. We wanted to do some beach walking so we went north to a little own called Anchor Point. The owner of the B and B suggested a few galleries that are very nice in this small town. We did go to them and found the art very nice, not too expensive,and the owners very friendly. The beach was beautiful. It was sandy so we could walk quite far. As usual here in Alaska the views were amazing! We went for wild flower walk in the afternoon. I'll do a post later showing the flowers. We had dinner up the road and I have a few good pictures from there.

If you remember, Mt. Redoubt had quite an explosion not too long ago. This volcano was visible from the beach.

This was a very interesting way to launch a fishing boat!

Their off!

Beautiful designs in the sand!

All done with this fish!!!!!!!

We stopped at a funky little espresso stand! Love the sign!

The SBA having his usual treat! If I had treats like that I'd weigh 300 pounds!!

At the same stand, typical of the things we have seen.

A wild flower meadow, that's lupine.

This is a view from the deck. We Blogged and read here this afternoon.

This is the little town where we had dinner. The flower baskets were lovely!!!!And at a post office of all things!

The perfect sight to end a great day! Thanks again to all of you that have come with us!

Day 6

Today we took a boat ride to a small village called Saldovia. There are no roads. The only way to get there is by plane or boat. We took a boat in order to see more sea life. The village was small. Part of it has been rebuilt since the 1964 earthquake. That part was not too interesting. However, the older part had the old board walk and the houses on stilts pre-dating the earthquake. This part of the town was much more interesting. The trip was about 1 1/2 hours from Homer. On this vacation we have seen some amazing wildlife and we were not disapointed this time. We happened upon a whole group of sea otters resting on kelp. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Views from the boat going over to the town.

Here they are!!!!

These guys are so cute! They are making a slow come back after the Exon-Valdez tragedy!!Many , many were killed! They depend on their fur to keep warm in these frigid waters. The oil penetrated their fur and caused the death of so many!

We are now entering Saldovia.

The native tribes are very apparent in this small town.

Just a little pocket beach.

How's this for a little patriotic spirit?!

Here is an exmple of the houses on stilts. We had coffee in a cute little book store on stilts.

Time to get the boat back.

I thought this blog would end there till we saw this 310.6 pound halibut!!!! Boy, that's lots of great eating!!!!!!
Thanks again to all of you going on this trip with us. Wish you were here!!!

Day five

Here we are in Homer! About 4500 folks live here in the town. Most stay year around. There is a large sand spit where most of the fishing boats are located. It is very beautiful with lots of mountains and water. There is an eagle nest across the street from McDonalds. We got several good pictures.

Not sure if this is Mom or Dad eagle! Both take care of the kids!

We went for a drive and these two glaciers are very obvious.

I wanted to show how tall the fireweed is, so Jim stood by the pretty flowers.

This is a photo of the Homer spit.

This was a real cute little cafe that had marvelous halibut sandwiches.

Another glacier view. We saw all this and the following pictures on an evening drive.

Amazing!

There was a beautiful valley between the road and the water and mountains. They were growing hay. Notice the skulls !
Thanks to you folks that are following our trip! We appreciate it very much.
By the way Kevin, we are going to Timeless Toys tomorrow! We'll take photos!